Staff & Board

Rashida Bumbray is a curator and choreographer. In 2022, she curated Loophole of Retreat: Venice, a transnational gathering focused on Black women’s intellectual and creative labor as part of Simone Leigh’s exhibition Sovereignty at the American Pavilion for the 59th Venice Biennale. As a Bessie-nominated choreographer whose practice draws from traditional African American vernacular and folk forms, Bumbray’s performances have been presented by Tate Modern, London; the New Museum, The Met, Harlem Stage, Dancing While Black, and SummerStage, all in New York; and Project Row Houses, Houston. She was a 2019 United States Artist Fellow, and her work Run Mary Run was named among the New York Times’ best performances of 2012. Bumbray began her curatorial career in 2001 at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, where she coordinated major exhibitions including Energy/Experimentation: Black Artists and Abstraction 1964–1984 with Kellie Jones. As associate curator at The Kitchen, New York, Bumbray organized critically-acclaimed commissions and exhibitions including first New York City solo exhibitions for many artists, including Simone Leigh, Leslie Hewitt, Adam Pendleton, Lauren Kelley, Jamal Cyrus, Elodie Pong, and Kyle Abraham, among others. Bumbray was guest curator of Creative Time’s public art exhibition Funk, God, Jazz, and Medicine: Black Radical Brooklyn in 2014. Most recently, as Founding Director of Culture and Art at the Open Society Foundations, Bumbray spearheaded the development of the foundations’ first global program dedicated to advancing diverse artistic practices and strengthening locally led cultural spaces around the world. In 2015, Bumbray was nominated for the Independent Curators International Curatorial Vision Award. And in 2018, she was honored among women leaders by The Met, and received the Alchemist Award for Socially Engaged Art from A Blade of Grass. A graduate of Oberlin College, Bumbray also has an MA in Africana Studies from New York University.

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